Walking In Mayo

The recent form tells its own story. The sequence of 4, pulled up, 8, 6, 11, and 15 — working back from the most recent run — shows a horse that has gone from competitive to well beaten, with the pulled-up run somewhere in the middle suggesting things have not always gone smoothly. There is no obvious upward curve here, which is the one thing the yard — sorry, the team — would be hoping to see at this stage of a horse's career.

What keeps the situation from being entirely bleak is the yard behind it. Trainer Ross O'Sullivan, based in Kilcullen, Co Kildare, has sent out 40 winners this season, which is a meaningful number — that is not a small operation finding its feet, but a yard with genuine firepower. Horses trained by O'Sullivan are clearly capable of winning races, which means Walking In Mayo's struggles are not a reflection of poor preparation. Sometimes a horse simply finds winning difficult, and at six years old, with no wins from eight attempts, that pattern is becoming harder to ignore.

Whether there is a race out there that suits Walking In Mayo well enough to change the story remains to be seen. For now, it is a horse that has given its team plenty of opportunities and not yet taken one itself.